Tiago Guiomar Ribeiro

Robot Animation & Human-Robot Interaction Technology

Lisbon, Portugal

I am an eclectic engineer who’s major pursuit is the connection between arts and intelligent, interactive technology.

My major work has been on robots that interact with people, in various contexts such as entertainment, education, personal- or labour- assistance, etc.Within those fields, I have accumulated 8 years of expertise in animation and behaviour management technology for autonomous social robots.

Technically my expertise includes programming lower-level software that controls robots, to high-level animation tools and plug-ins that are suitable for non-technical personnel and end-users, such as artists and psychologists, and also all the middleware that is required to integrate such tools and robots with socially-aware artificial intelligence that drives the interaction.

In summary, my job is to create technology that allows creating such artificial intelligence creatures.

My connection with the arts is very personal, and is driven in most part by my passion for animation, but also for digital film and photography, three particular fields on which I am mostly self-taught and also explore as a hobby. These creative abilities and understanding, allied with my technical background, have allowed me to stand together with both artists, roboticists and software-engineers, to bring them together and build a bridge between all those worlds.

By working together and in multi-disciplinary settings, we are better able to materialize our imagination into real, physical achievements, and to push all those fields forward into the future.